


A Sadder Story

by myrishswamp



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-07 00:51:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1878786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrishswamp/pseuds/myrishswamp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At Winterfell, Meera tells Sansa about the Knight of the Laughing Tree.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sadder Story

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the future not too long after the end of A Dance With Dragons. In this story, Meera and Jojen left the cave without telling Bran whilst he was undergoing training in his last chapter and began a slow journey south. Sansa has returned to Winterfell.

In the three days she had been at Winterfell the girl had barely spoken. Every so often she would open her mouth and breath in deeply, as if she was about to say something important, but after a pause she would close it again or murmer something distant about the food.

When Sansa had first seen her she had thought that a different girl was crawling over the snow and rubble towards the castle. But her hair was too light a shade and her gait was all wrong. She looked the right kind of mess though. The men’s britches that she wore were faded and worn through at the knee and one hand, swollen and missing a finger, was wrapped around the three pronged spear shifting from side to side in front of her. When the girl had seen Sansa standing at the window she had seemed to recognise her, lowering her arm with a gasp of relief that brought the Norrey guard running, although Sansa was certain they had never met. Her name was Meera, a Lady Reed from the crannogs of the Neck, the daughter of one of her father’s old friends, so the girl had told her.

She was more a woman than a girl really, but it was easy to forget that. Meera was older than Sansa by several years but must have been almost two feet smaller. Crannogmen were always small, Walda said it was because they ate too many frogs, it made them want to grow close towards the ground and turn into one. They built their houses, and even their castles, out of wood and straw on islands that floated on mud and they had no real knights. Nor ladies, she had thought, looking at the girl. There had been no crannogmen in the stories of Sansa’s childhood but she knew from her lessons with Maester Luwin that although deadly with poisoned arrows, they kept mostly to themselves and rarely ventured outside of their swamps. She wondered why this one had.

The morning before last, Sansa had invited her to walk with her through the godswood, thinking they would stop to pray - they kept the old gods in the Neck, she was sure of it - but Meera had seemed distracted, veering off the path to skip between the stones that lay in the river running behind the great weirwood tree, plunging her spear into the water but never catching anything. 

She should go and see her now, Sansa thought, to wish her a good night’s sleep and make sure that she was comfortable. Meera had been put in Bran’s old room, down the corridor from her own. The last time she had seen Bran he had been in there, lying unmoving on the bed. The bed was still there, its legs whittled where the Bastard’s dogs had gnawed on them, but Bran was lost. There were ghosts in that room, but Meera hadn’t known her brother, or Jeyne, so they wouldn’t haunt her. She was propped up against the headboard in a borrowed nightgown when Sansa entered. 

Sansa stood, one hand still on the door handle. "I came to say that I hope you are warm enough, and that you sleep well tonight."

"I am, thank you my lady, and you as well," Meera replied.

For a few minutes she remained in the doorway, feeling that there was something else that needed saying but unsure of what it was, polite, empty smiles bumping off each other until, "Do you like stories?" Meera was speaking to her. 

Sansa wasn’t sure what the right answer was, so she said "I used to." 

"And do you still?"

Sansa sighed and walked towards the bed. "I haven’t heard a story in a long time." She went to sit down at the end and Meera wiggled her feet away to make room. "There was a woman here, we called her Old Nan, she told us stories when we were children. We loved them, me and Arya and Bran and baby Rickon, we used to argue over which ones she told. Robb, he was the oldest, him and my half-brother Jon made fun of them, they would sit with us and scoff at everything she said, but I think that was just so they had an excuse to listen." 

"It was my parents who told the stories," Meera said, "and my brother too, although I didn’t like his so much. I could tell you one now, if you wanted." 

Sansa smiled, "I would like that." In truth Sansa would rather have returned to her bed, but Meera’s voice sounded like a plea was trying to escape it and it would have been unkind to refuse her. _Perhaps she is afraid of lying awake in this room._

Meera settled down into the bed, "It is a story I heard a hundred times at Greywater, but I suspect you will not know it."

She began. 

"It starts with a crannogman, small as me. First, you have to understand, very few of us ever leave the Neck, we are safe there, never too close to Westeros’ troubles, and the people outside are not always kind to us. The Neck has its own beauty too, and there is magic in the bog. It contorts itself around you, so that a stranger to it could wake and find themselves somewhere completely different to the place they fell asleep. We learn how to use this, and how to let the mud sink us, or support us enough to run on. It protects and nourishes us, the little crannogman knew that, but sometimes there is no room between you and the mud, it clings to you, refusing to wash off and you start dreaming of a place that you’ve only ever heard about, where the air is clear and full and you can see the whole world spread about you. It wasn’t that he didn’t love the swamps, he was alive in them, but he was young and adventurous too, and braver than most. He wanted to try himself somewhere else, just for a while."

Sansa understood that well enough. "Where did he go?"

"First, to the Isle of Faces, where the Green Men live, and he spent a whole winter there, but this story begins in the spring, when the time came for him to leave and set off once more. As he rowed his boat across the Gods Eye a castle came into view. It was bigger than any castle he had ever imagined, bigger even than the one we sit in." 

"Harrenhal."

Meera nodded. "And when he reached it he saw coloured banners flying through the air above crowds of people, maidens dancing and knights strutting in their armour. A great tourney was about to begin. Lords and ladies and champions from throughout the seven kingdoms had come. Even the king was there, with his white swords and his son the dragon prince. Well, the little crannogman knew that this might be his only chance to see a tourney such as this, so he left his boat on the shore and joined the throng.

"He was walking across a field towards the castle, enjoying the spring sun’s new warmth, when three boys set apon him, squires, younger than he was, but bigger and mean. They knocked him to the ground, throwing kicks and names at him and pushing him down every time he rose. Eventually he had no choice but to curl up and wait for it to finish. He was never a good fighter, but he studied their faces hard, so that he could revenge himself later. He didn't have to wait long, for soon a howl came from behind them, ‘That’s my father’s man you’re kicking!’ It was a she-wolf, full of rage. She came at the squires with a wooden lance, scattering them, then helped the little crannogman to his feet. She took him to her lair to clean his cuts and there he met the rest of her pack. They were three more wolves, her brothers, one wild, one quiet, and one still a pup. They found him new clothes to wear, and insisted that he sit with them at that evening’s feast, which was to mark the opening of the tourney. 

“He enjoyed the feast a great deal, and sat with the wolves amongst moose and bears and mermen. There was food, drink and music from the dragon prince's harp, so beautiful it made the she-wolf cry, although she threw wine over a brother who teased her for it. After that, there was dancing. The dragon prince’s wife, a sweet lady of sun and spear, had brought a dozen companions with her, and they were filling the floor. She was sickly, and had little energy for it, but her ladies carried on throughout the night. One, a maid with laughing purple eyes, danced with several men, last of them the young wolf, but only after his brother, the wild one, had asked her.

“It was then, watching the crowd, that the little crannogman spotted the three squires, and called the wolves over to point to them. This time he could see their knights, and the sigils on their surcoats – one porcupine, one pitchfork, and one pair of towers.”

Meera paused then, to allow Sansa to think over the sigils. The towers she knew were House Frey, that didn’t surprise her, and the porcupine House Blount, but she couldn’t think who the other could be. Even so, she was grateful for Meera’s obliqueness. There was comfort in the language of stories, a dead wolf could mean a dead father but it couldn’t hurt as much. 

She waved her hand a little, and Meera continued. 

“The young pup suggested he get arms and a horse, that way he could fight the knights and win back his honour. That made the little crannogman’s heart sink, for what chance would he have against trained knights? He would only shame himself further. That night he directed himself towards the Isle of Faces and said a prayer to the Old Gods. His faith was strong, he had been brought up like that, and he had spent a long while with the Green Men, tending to their weirwoods. Perhaps the Gods would see to answer him.”

“Did they?” Sansa wasn’t sure she believed it. Why had she never heard this story before?

“Perhaps,” Meera sighed, “I am not sure that they did, but the next morning a mystery knight entered the lists, short, with mismatched armour and a shield that bore a laughing weirwood tree. The knight won every joust they tried, but challenged only the three knights whose squires had attacked the little crannogman. When they were done, and the knights came to pay ransom, the mystery knight called out across the field, voice booming out of a greathelm, ‘Teach your squires honour, that shall be ransom enough.’ So the little crannogman’s revenge had been taken. The smallfolk rejoiced in the victory too, for the defeated knights were not well liked among them, but not everyone was happy. Some took the knight’s disguise as insolence, and several vowed to be their unmasker. In the end the dragon prince was sent by the king to find the mystery knight, but when he returned he claimed that all he found was the shield, hanging from a tree.

“The mystery knight never returned to the tourney, it was the dragon prince who was the final champion, and he named the she-wolf his queen of love and beauty.” Meera’s voice had become very soft, “You know how that story ends, don’t you?” 

Sansa nodded, her throat felt low in her neck. Dragons could be cruel, but the South was full of cruel creatures, lions and stags and mockingbirds. “And what of the crannogman?”

“He returned to the Neck soon after. He had found great friendship with the wolves, and knew that for their kindness he would remain loyal to them for the rest of his life. Later when his two children were born, he told them about the knight of the laughing tree, and one day they too would leave the Neck, on an adventure.”

Meera had closed her eyes, she looked about to cry. Sansa rested a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I suppose one day we will be wolves and little crannogmen too, in the stories.” She had meant them as a comfort, but the words had come out bitter.

Meera smiled sadly and took Sansa’s hand with her own. Her other hand, the one with three fingers, was near the floor, resting on the battered greathelm she had arrived with. She leaned over the bed then and heaved it onto the covers, picking the nail of her thumb at a corner where the metal had bent. 

‘I have more if you would hear them, about different wolves, and crows and trees and monsters, real monsters.’ _Different wolves? was it possible that..._ Meera’s eyes were fixed on the helm. ‘But those are sadder stories and it will take more strength than I have to tell them.’

Sansa kissed her hand, then let it go and stood. ‘Then we will sleep, and in the morning we will both have strength for sadder stories.’


End file.
